lsus" depends, for its success, immediately upon
the intelligence and sympathy of the reader: "Indeed, were my scenes
stars, it must be his co-operating fancy which, supplying all chasms,
shall connect the scattered lights into one constellation--a Lyre or a
Crown."

In the concluding paragraph of this note there is a point of
interest--the statement of the author's hope that the readers of
"Paracelsus" will not "be prejudiced against other productions which may
follow in a more popular, and perhaps less difficult form." From this it
might fairly be inferred that Browning had not definitively adopted his
characteristic method: that he was far from unwilling to gain the
general ear: and that he was alert to the difficulties of popularisation
of poetry written on lines similar to those of "Paracelsus." Nor would
this inference be wrong: for, as a matter of fact, the poet, immediately
upon the publication of "Paracelsus," determined to devote himself to
poetic work which should have so direct a contact with actual life that
its appeal should reach even to the most uninitiate in the mysteries and
delights of verse.

In his early years Browning had always a great liking for walking in the
dark. At Camberwell he was wont to carry this love to the point of
losing many a night's rest. There was, in particular, a wood near
Dulwich, whither he was wont to go. There he would walk swiftly and
eagerly along the solitary and lightless byways, finding a potent
stimulus to imaginative thought in the happy isolation thus enjoyed,
with all the concurrent delights of natural things, the wind moving like
a spirit through the tree-branches, the drifting of poignant fragrances,
even in winter-tide, from herb and sappy bark, imperceptible almost by
the alertest sense in the day's manifold detachments. At this time, too,
he composed much in the open air. This he rarely, if ever, did in later
life. Not only many portions of "Paracelsus," but several scenes in
"Strafford," were enacted first in these midnight silences of the
Dulwich woodland. Here, too, as the poet once declared, he came to know
the serene beauty of dawn: for every now and again, after having read
late, or written long, he would steal quietly from the house, and walk
till the morning twilight graded to the pearl and amber of the new day.

As in childhood the glow of distant London had affected him to a
pleasure that was not without pain, perhaps to a pain rather that was a
fi